


not to forget you, but to endure

by fealle



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Dark!Charles, Gen, M/M, Mind Control, Mind Games, Mindwiping, Post-Canon, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-29 20:01:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fealle/pseuds/fealle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>charles imposes a measure of peace. whatever it takes. (forgiveness is too easy. kindness is a luxury he can no longer afford.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	not to forget you, but to endure

**Author's Note:**

> there is mind control, or telepaths doing horrible things to other people out of love and security. nothing really more intense than that.
> 
> above all things the fic is an introspective fic, but that's about it.

_I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,_   
_in secret, between the shadow and the soul._

\- Pablo Neruda

 

He woke up not knowing who he was.

 

This is love: a man (strange how he knows it was - is - always _will be_ a man, _the_ man) traces a word over his naked chest, carefully, with a perfectly manicured nail. It's a word with four letters and he doesn't recognize it and the man smiles kindly at him. _Do you recognize the word?_

 

He shakes his head. He doesn't know why he isn't afraid of this.

 

The man sighs, and says, _we'll just have to pick a beginning. Do you know how most stories start?_

 

He tilts his head, thinks for a bit, and replies, quietly, with, _es war einmal_ -

 

No. That can't be right. He frowns, his eyes flickering to the man, who smiles encouragingly at him. _Well?_

_Es war einmal,_ he repeats again. The man purses his lips in disapproval at the German, and then he understands that he is not to speak in that language anymore. That language was comfort for someone else. _Once upon a time. I don't understand_ -

_That is good, for now,_ and he cuts through his confusion gently, his voice like velvet. _Once upon a time. And now we need a hero, and all heroes must have a name. Do you have one?_

 

He shakes his head.

_Well, that won't do, now, won't it._

 

The man traces a name on his throat.

_Your name is Erik. Can you repeat that for me?_

_Yes,_ he replies. _My name is Erik. Once upon a time._

 

There's a flash of something dark in the man's eyes which goes as quickly as he's seen it, and his face is back in that careful mask of kindness which he's grown used to looking - as if he's beheld that face for an eternity of his life -

 

Ridiculous. Erik - his name is Erik, now - chides himself for being overly sentimental for something that is yet to happen.

_It's a good name for a prince._

_I'm not a prince. I -_ a pause as Erik tries to think of how he can be so sure of this he can barely remember anything. And then, he offers, _there was a ... the sea._

_Yes._

_It was cold._ The memory eludes him. The man reaches over him to cup his face in his soft hands, and shakes his head.

_No, no. That isn't how we began. There's room for remembering, perhaps, later on, but now is the time for ritual, and you must repeat after me: your name is Erik._

_Yes._ He nods. This is a fact, he cannot dispute it despite not knowing why. _Once upon a time, there was Erik._

 

The man nods.

_And you are?_

 

The man leans forward to press a kiss on his forehead and Erik feels himself blushing and unable to look at him after. _Charles._

_Ah. Charles._ A frown. _I feel like .... that is important_ -

_Once upon a time, Erik_ -

_Yes, that's why, all the more so._ He finds it odd that he doesn't feel afraid that he doesn't remember. Perhaps he is even more confused at the fact that he doesn't feel afraid, he feels like he should, because something has been taken away from him and yet he doesn't know how to properly respond to it. _Charles. I feel like_ -

_No, darling._ Charles pushes him down on the bed, gently. _I am Charles. You are Erik._ Es war einmal. _That is enough for now. Sleep._

 

He feels like he's been sleeping for eternity, like the way one sleeps after one's mind is viciously torn apart by a nightmare coming true, unable to distinguish between reality and dreaming. Before he closes his eyes, before Charles turns off the light on his wall, Charles tells him, _Erik, don't forget: you are loved._

 

Charles lets the words hang in the air like a guillotine. For the life of Erik he couldn't understand why he knows the burden of accepting that he is worthy of this when he had just woken up and learned his name.

 

He lay in his bed with his eyes closed but he doesn't sleep until much later, until he's exhausted his mind wondering why there is a need to remind him that he is loved and that the burden is onto him to accept this as a fact; sure as he knows that he is Erik and the man was Charles. Now he knows that he is loved. To be loved means that someone can never be alone, and Erik doesn't understand how that, too, can be a fact as well as a burden and a curse.

 

 

♥♥♥

 

He fell asleep once he realized that the conversation he'd had with Charles was done without even opening his mouth once.

 

 

♥♥♥

 

 

When he woke up, Charles was there, and he had pushed away the curtains to let the sun in.

_Good morning,_ Charles says. _Did you sleep well?_

 

Erik shrugs.

_I can tell you you've had a better tonight last night,_ Charles tells him. He opens the windows. Erik can feel the warm summer wind from outside, can hear the birds singing, each to each.

 

Too calm. There was a sense of calm that was heavily imposed in his room and despite not remembering anything he could tell that this sense of calm was something recent. Not an intrinsic property of this house, or of Charles, or of him.

_You can talk to me,_ Erik says, _like - like this._

_Yes. It is much more convenient._ He sits on the edge of Erik's bed, beside him, leans over to rearrange his hair to the side, which was a futile attempt - not that he'd made such an effort to do so - given that his hair tended to stick everywhere in the morning -

 

which Erik knows because -

 

He frowns. Well, because -

 

Charles only smiles at him. _Breakfast?_

_Yes,_ Erik replies. _Give me a minute._

 

He tries to get out of bed, and in his half-asleep state nearly trips as he goes down. _I am - usually more coordinated than this,_ Erik says, rather annoyed, while Charles laughs a bit on his side. _We'll be waiting._

_I .... don't know where you'll be waiting,_ Erik says, and finds that this is an odd thing to say. He doesn't sound very sure. _You'll have to show me._

 

Charles purses his lips. _I've been waiting for you for a very, very long time._

 

Erik doesn't know what to say to that so he waits for him to explain, to add something else, but Charles only says, _I suppose you won't remember now._

_And once upon a time, I did?_

_Of course. But that is not now,_ Charles says, almost impatiently. Strange how even when annoyed his voice still sounds so gentle in his mind, though Erik doesn't know if that's the truth, that Charles is always painfully gentle and painfully kind, or it's just _a_ truth that he considers to be _the_ truth regardless of whether Charles is always gentle and kind. He finds that he believes it to be a case of the latter, but he doesn't know why he doesn't feel strongly enough about it to consider it a fact, like how he knows that he is Erik is fact and that Charles is Charles.

_I will wait for you,_ Charles says.

_We will go down there and meet them together._

 

That is a fact, Erik tells himself, and he knows it to be true. One of the few things that he knows to be a truth, for the moment.

 

 

♥♥♥

 

 

He comes out with something better than his pyjamas, which was a turtleneck (black) and his khakis. He doesn't know why he picked them - and then he realized that he never did. They were laid out on the bed when he got out of the toilet because Charles said that he will wait for him, and that's what he did.

_This is for me?_ Erik asks.

_Well, darling, it's always been for you._ Charles takes his hand carefully with his own, as if unused to holding it, and he leads him outside. Erik feels .... rather childish. He thinks that a better way would be to lead and Charles would be at his side, but he doesn't know why that should be any better than where he is now. Charles glances at him, and for a moment Erik is worried that he could read his mind, too, but then chides himself for being ridiculous. There are no monsters like that in this world where a man could waltz into your life and know every little detail of what you are the moment you look at them in the eye. The world is not populated by personal gorgons, Erik tells himself, and for a moment Charles smiles, but says nothing.

 

 

♥♥♥

 

 

Words, Erik finds, are very confusing things. They feel awkward tumbling out of his mouth, but Charles tells him that he has to speak because the others don't really talk the way they do.

 

Erik is introduced to Hank, who is blue, and Raven, who is also blue but with piercing yellow eyes that watch him like a hawk. There is Sean, who is tall and pale and skinny and with curly red hair. Alex is the blond boy with the sad blue eyes and angry mouth perpetually set into a familiar scowl, that Erik can't help but think as he looks at him, _I am - was - the reason for that._ Moira was a nice woman who looked a little stern but she always spoke politely around Charles.

 

And at the end of the table, wearing a blindly white dress, was a woman with blonde hair and blue eyes and -

 

Gone. A trick of the eye.

 

He didn't realize that he'd been staring at the empty seat until Charles says, "Erik, are you alright?"

 

There was a silence in the room that Erik hesitated to break - but it was familiar in ways that he's not sure how - and then he finally says, "the woman. You forgot to introduce her to me."

 

"What woman," Raven says sharply.

 

"The other blonde - "

_SLEEP_ , Charles roars in his ears, and Erik closes his eyes.

 

 

*

 

He woke up not knowing who he was.

 

This is love: a man (strange how he knows it was - is - always will be a man, the man) traces a word over his naked chest, carefully with a perfectly manicured nail. It's a word with four letters and he doesn't recognize it.

 

He tries to speak. "What do you know about me?"

 

And the man, who for some reason he knows, has been so kind - so patient - and so frustrated - at having waited for him to wake up for so long, tells him, rather mournfully, "nothing anymore."

 

He knows he's lying. He wants to know that he is certain (and he knows that he cannot be sure) that the man was lying.

 

"I don't know who I am," he begins. He doesn't know why he isn't afraid that he doesn't remember anything about what he is, or what he could be.

 

"Erik," the man says. "Your name is Erik."

 

Erik nods carefully. He feels like he shouldn't accept this so easily, but it will do for now, because he'd rather have something to call himself with than have to refer to himself in pronouns constantly and make things more difficult for himself. "Where am I? Who are you? Why am I .... here?"

 

The man looks at him and replies, rather cautiously, "my name is Charles. You're in my house, I've invited you, because you can never be anywhere else."

 

"Why not?"

 

"Where you are wanted, Erik, it's too dangerous for you."

 

That is a truth, Erik knows. Even without looking at Charles' face he knows that to be a truth -

 

which means that he has to presume that here, in this house, he was _needed_ , and that this is a truth that he had accepted for himself. Erik closes his eyes. "Is it alright if I don't understand anything else yet?"

 

Charles laughs, rather softly. "Yes, it's alright. In time, you will be better, and then, perhaps, you'll understand why it was necessary."

 

Erik glances at him, and a sudden viciousness - a sudden rush of blood and anger to his head compels him to say, "you couldn't just make me do it?"

 

And Charles, who has been so patient and polite and careful at answering his questions neutrally, bares his teeth at him in a parody of a smile and tells him, "condone your own iniquities, Erik, to narrow down your vision further? I think not. You do that to yourself even better than I ever will --"

 

\-- He stops himself right there, biting his lower lip in a mighty gesture to restrain himself. "That was - uncalled for, I apologize."

 

Erik frowns.

 

"I think," he says slowly, "You're supposed to tell me that I'm loved, or something to that effect, after this point."

 

Charles laughs at him, again, and this time he sounds a lot more bitter than he'd remembered. "I could spend an eternity trying to hammer those words in your head, darling, and the only equivalent you'll be able to understand is the one whose definition is paid in coin."

 

"You're telling me that I'm a rather stubborn, callous - "

 

"You are all of those things you've always suspected yourself to be," Charles snaps at him, "but what you fail to see is that you are so much more than what you could ever conceive. For all your talk of being _the better man_ , you can't even do that for yourself, you hypocrite."

 

Erik is confused, and afraid. He understands that Charles has plenty of reasons to be angry at him but he doesn't know why, what, how, when. So he says, "breakfast. You have to lead me there."

 

"If you'll trust me."

 

"Yes?" A pause. "Yes, yes I think I will."

 

Charles nods, content to lay down the sword in the meantime for a bit of rest, decides to walk towards the windows, flings the curtains to the side to let the sun in, and decides to open the window. Erik swings his legs out of bed and leans on the side table as he drags himself out when he notices -

 

"Charles," he says. "I don't like sweets."

 

This is a fact that he knows which is driving him to a point of fear so absolute, that he doesn't understand why he could barely even move or breathe, but he knows full well that _this is a fact._ There's a tremor in Charles' voice as he asks him, "sorry?"

 

"The chocolate," he points at the table beside the bed. "Did you --?"

 

"No," Charles replies. He forces him down to the bed gently with his hands and presses a kiss to his eyes to close them. His lips were cold. "Sleep."

 

 

*

 

 

Erik doesn't dream often. When he does, they're of vague, blurry shapes of colour. No sound, like he's viewing the world through lenses that were carefully controlled and directed by someone else. In that sense they weren't a dream, but a continuation of a reality long-forgotten and imposed upon his will. Reality was like that. Life was like that: a series of actions, shadows, in blurry shapes and colours that once spoke, very briefly, of a man, but no longer. Quick as a flash of lightning against grey skies. True as the taste of ashes in his mouth.

 

( _ashes?_ )

 

 

♥♥♥

 

 

He woke up not knowing who he was.

 

This was love: waking up and glancing at the man beside him, who immediately purses his lips with disdain as he wakes, as if this were nothing but another role to play for the fifth, seventeenth, one hundredth, an eternity --

 

And he grabs his hand, pulls him down the bed, and tells him, "we should be together."

 

And the man, not knowing how else to reply, swallows and says, "yes."

 

"So stay with me," he urges him. "Stay with me, and perhaps we can - "

 

But the man is shaking his head and he puts up his hand to press against his own lips to tell him, "No. When the time comes for you to leave, Erik, you will make it worse, because the betrayal will cut deeper than any of the wounds we've inflicted on each other."

 

That was a fact, he was horrified to realize. That despite not knowing who he is and what he could be, he was always on the verge of leaving. He was a verb to every utterance this man makes. The man is looking far away from him, beyond the curtains where the light peeks in a soft yellow through the room, a slit between the curtains enough to pierce his eyes from the side of his face. His eyes were blue. His eyes were very blue. Suddenly Erik knew that he is on the verge of uttering something forbidden, like the way sometimes ( _sometimes?_ ) the man's fingers have traced a four-lettered word on his throat which he knew to be true, in the same way that he only knows the only thing that is real is the fact that he is alive.

 

There is a word for men who are condemned to live, like him, but he doesn't know yet what it is.

 

"Time to sleep, then?"

 

And the man closes his eyes, and whispers, "yes."

 

He frowns. "May I dream of you?"

 

The man smiles. "No."

 

That was something he had not earned yet, he realizes, and as he closes his eyes he hears him whisper, in his mind, _perhaps someday._

 

(What was unsaid: when I've forgiven you. His heart hurts, and then there was nothing. Silence, and the dark.)

 

 

*

 

 

He woke up not knowing who he was, but he remembers who the other man was, and that was love.

 

"Charles," he said - Charles opens his mouth to say something, and then he tries it like this: _Charles_.

_Yes?_

_I remember your name,_ he said.

_I'm glad,_ Charles replies. He sits on the edge of his bed and sighs. _Do you remember anything else?_

 

He frowns, trying to think of things, forming impressions of memories and words in his mind until he says, _No. bBt I know that talking to me is difficult for you, because something - there was -_

 

He breaks off in frustration, not being able to name the thing that was stolen from him, so he settles with, _I can't remember anything._

_That's not true,_ Charles tells him, his hand hovering over his own. _You remember my name. You know that there's something wrong with this house. You know that I am very tired because of you, but not because of_ you _. You remember things, but you have to be patient and let me take care of you._

 

He slips his fingers in between the spaces of Charles' own, and finds that they fit together quite nicely. Erik smiles.

_Breakfast._

_Yes, let's._

 

 

♥♥♥

 

 

He leads him out to breakfast. Erik is introduced to Hank, who is blue, and Raven, who is also blue but with piercing yellow eyes that watch him like a hawk. There is Sean, who is tall and pale and skinny and with curly red hair. Alex is the blond boy with the sad blue eyes and angry mouth perpetually set into a familiar scowl, that Erik can't help but think as he looks at him, I am - was - the reason for that. Moira was a nice woman who looked a little stern but she always spoke politely around Charles. And quietly, as if sharing a private horror, _the woman in white, her name was Emma Frost._

 

It takes a while for Charles to answer, _yes._

_She is dangerous?_

_Yes._

_Did she hurt me?_

 

Charles purses his lips, asks Sean to pass the maple syrup for his pancakes. _She did enough._

 

He felt nauseous. "I need some air," he says, and awkwardly shambles out to the back of the kitchen, his hands moving over the back pocket of his pants because he knows that he's kept a pack of cigarettes in there. He takes them out, takes the lighter on the other pocket, and steps outside to the garden for some fresh air, basking in the heat of the summer sun and the smell of cut grass and -

 

sulphur -

 

 

*

_Charles, in his room, is sitting with his hands folded in his deadened lap as he watches the rise and fall of his chest while he sleeps._

_There is a knock on his door; and then Raven slips in. Charles glances at her but doesn't say anything otherwise, simply purses his lips and says nothing. He is sitting ramrod straight, much like the perfect picture of forced grace and civility. The better man, above all things._

_(Whether he loves or not is not important here. This is war. The time for being kind is long past.)_

_Raven senses that she is allowed to speak because her mind returns to her like the way one starts to discern colour in a slowly fading world of grey. She must choose her words carefully. The first thing she tells him, because things like 'stop' and 'please' mean nothing in the face of Charles' anger, and his despair, not anymore: "He wants freedom, Charles, and there's only so much you can do to tell him otherwise."_

_Charles does nothing to stop her. A man pays too much and loneliness makes for no better company than the living. This means that Raven is allowed to become her vicious self, and because she knows that Charles is uncomfortable with her body, blue and scaled like the viper he is, her voice drops into a whisper that is as subtle as a knife._

_"If not Erik, there will be another one like him. Someone who will look past your illusions and find no mercy there. Just some cripple waiting for the right memories to distort for the common good."_

_Charles' smile is a fragile thing. The mind is a fragile thing that believes whatever it feels to be crucial at the moment, folds at the slightest pressure, like snow falling everywhere in spring._

_And in every soul, a little dread must grow._

_"Did you know, Raven, that the_ pavo cristatus _lives a lot longer in captivity than they do in the wild?"_

 

 

♥♥♥

 

 

_In another time, in another place, Charles finds Emma Frost._

_Emma is always immaculately well-dressed and well-put together whenever he meets her. so is he, in varying successes, in different times and places. To different people._

_From one liar to another, the brush of telepathic minds is practically a salute._

_In this meeting, Charles does not smile, and Emma does not yield. Charles whispers, 'I am doing a lot of work in undoing what you and Sebastian have set in motion to doom him in the first place._

_Emma laughs._

_'Sugar, I find it adorable that you think we're to blame. He didn't carve him out of marble. He played the strings. Erik gladly sang, but only because he already knew the words by heart.'_

 

 

*

 

 

He woke up not knowing who he was.

 

He buries his head on the pillows of his bed, his hand making a fist against the bed covers. "What if I don't want to know who I was?"

 

".... would you be content with that? Truly?"

 

That was hope, he realizes. The first time in a long time he's heard hope in that voice.

 

He thinks, _that would be nice._ Not having to be worried about disappointment. About fear.

 

To live again, when so many others have not succeeded in their lives, paltry as it had been.

 

To forget sins. Forget past hurts. Anger. (He remembers: at some point in his life, he has forgotten that he was loved.)

 

"No," he replied. "It'd be easier, but I think i'd wreck my mind eventually, trying to remember what I don't want to know."

 

"I still love you," he tells him, for what it's worth, and it's his turn to laugh as he replies, "unfortunately, so do I. Is this the part where you ask me to do something impressive, like moving a satellite, or perhaps a coin?"

 

"You're confusing your dreams, Erik - "

 

" _No_ ," Erik snarls. "That was the lie: That you would give me a choice, when in fact there never was one in the first place. My god, what a _laugh_. This is merely an overture, because you wanted to prove to me that there are options for peace. Because once upon a time, you thought yourself responsible enough to force it to its conclusion so that something - someone - like me could never happen again."

 

He doesn't say anything. Merely raises an eyebrow at his indignation, but the way his fingers grip the edge of his lap tells him everything.

 

Memory, like lightning:

 

He has lithe limbs. They were made for kissing, for kneeling. The latter, though - not out of desire. A tragedy. He caused it. _No, Erik, it was you who did this._

 

A woman's voice in his ear: _Be careful. He won't be as fun as me, if he gets in your head._

 

"Go to sleep, Erik," Charles says, not unkindly, and Erik laughs and laughs and laughs and tells him, "coward. I may have been cruel but never a coward, never like you or like this," before his mind was blissfully engulfed by a dreamless sleep.

 

 

*

 

 

He woke up not knowing who he was.

 

He did, however, come up with many different ways to shred his room into pieces with all the metal in the room, until Charles tells him, _sleep, sleep_ , and Erik grabs his fountain pen and etches his numbers on the wall before he passes out. While he was asleep, the room is put together like it had been before and Charles takes his arm, kisses the numbers on his skin and whispers, "come back to me, please."

 

And that, too, was love.

 

 

*

_Hank finishes adjustments to the cerebro after a while. He turns to Charles, and with a face of greatest regret, he says, "your hair, Professor."_

_Charles nods. "I understand."_

_He thought that he'd be a lot more calm about it, but he wasn't. The first few snips of hair fell down on the floor, feathery-light, like dreams. Charles kept tensing up the minute the scissors come too near to his flesh. Charles doesn't cry. He can't, he's too tired. But he thinks,_ what a waste. _Of all the things that he's done, somehow, none of them were enough._

_It was a choice between the world and -_

_\-- too late. A little too late to make that choice again. Time was his greatest enemy._

_He cannot go back to the time where he and Erik made that move ("we have it in us to be the better men"; "we already **are** "), checkmate, bishop to king. _

_Shaw's victory, his own pyhrric loss, and Charles thinks, neither one of them better for it. But when Erik sleeps now, he sleeps innocent of his crimes. He didn't hear the men dying as the missiles fell down on them, right as rain. He didn't hear -_

_Raven's hands were careful as she moves through strands of his hair mournfully. When she finishes, Charles doesn't look at the mirror, but Moira, with her mind serrated and biting, still, even under his control, sends him a slither of hatred and disgust which he mercilessly extinguishes in its conception within her mind: like moth, fire, and him, the cold gust of wind against her flame._

 

 

*

 

 

He woke up not knowing who he was.

 

This is love: a man (strange how he knows it was - is - always _will be_ a man, _the_ man) traces a word over his naked chest, carefully, with a perfectly manicured nail. It's a word with four letters and he doesn't recognize it and the man smiles kindly at him. _Do you recognize the word?_

 

He shakes his head. He doesn't know why he isn't afraid of this.

 

The man sighs, and says, _we'll just have to pick a beginning. Do you know how most stories start?_

 

He tilts his head, thinks for a bit, and replies, quietly, with, _I understand it now._

 

The man frowns. Fear creeps in his spine and pools in his gut. _I'm sorry?_

_This is my grave,_ he says. _And will continue to be, because you're afraid of me as much as I'm afraid of you. We will continue to hurt each other in a place which is a lot more hospitable to both of our ideals, because the world outside is not ready to deal with us._

 

It takes a while for him before he responds, _you know very well that I want what you want, Erik. Just not in this scale. I don't want our revolution to come at the cost of so many. It will be a long and difficult path, in silence, in this quiet space, but believe me, we will achieve a lot more being together than we would being apart._

 

He feels he should apologize, but like all things, there is no more room for that (there will always be room for it, but he feels that it's a betrayal of who he was. Who he will be. He knows this the way he knows he is Erik, he will always be Erik, but he will never only be Erik.

 

That was a dream meant for someone else.)

_We will keep fighting you._

 

Charles knows. He had known it since the beginning when his days were disrupted by careful cues: Chocolate. The smell of sulphur. A woman who shouldn't be there, and yet is.

_Yes, darling. Yes you would._

 

Erik takes his hands in his own and brushes a kiss in his open palms. _Perhaps one day, I will hurt you enough to kill you. And when that time comes, I will mourn you._

_But not enough,_ Charles' tone takes a harder edge to it, now, _that you would give up your war._

 

Erik smiles. _No. Not at all._ And then he asks him: _Were you expecting otherwise? Would you be happy if I did?_

 

Charles slaps him. There was disgust in his face, unrestrained; his eyes were dimmed by tears. _I didn't expect anything less of you._

 

Erik laughs a bit, and then rubs his face ruefully, feeling his cheeks burn, bruise, at the force in which Charles had hit him. It was much better than resignation, indifference.

 

That was what they loved: what was inside, and not the one that appeared before them, in terrifying clarity, the image of a man unknown and familiar to both at the same time. Charles grips the bedsheets in anger, his knuckles white against the cloth. Erik gently moves his hand over his own, rubs the knuckles delicately with a thumb. For a while they remained there, saying nothing. Overburdened by silence, by the enormity of work before them, by their own hurts. One has to be courageous to love, Erik reminds himself. One has to be responsible. He was now terribly difficult to love. He felt that only one could do it. But to love is to yield, to submit --

 

Charles cuts through his reveries, hissing, snarling. _I am not yet willing._


End file.
